Not only did John come up with a unique theme for an arcade cabinet, but he also went the extra mile literally "sculpting" custom pieces for his build.
In a move some might say more foolish than bold, RetroBlast frontman Kevin Steele is handing over the keys to the RetroBlast.com website to a bunch of slack-jawed ...
This thing looks darn near identical to the original PONG cabinets of back in the day.
As to why he decided to build it, tnpshow had this to say:
"It's my first scratchbuilt cab and I decided to build it for a few reasons:
1. It's pretty cost efficient materials-wise 2. It's got great historical value 3. It's a great, easy shape cab to build (for your first one). 4. No original PCB or PC required - this thing is as simple as it gets! 5. Artwork is as simple as it gets (ok the control panel wasn't so simple, but we had the right tools at work). With the pre-laminated chipboard, there's no painting either!"
I'm hearing rumbles of this being Mamey material, and I've definitely got to agree, this is a top notch job!
Coming to us via the Crafster Forums , Crafster user "fluffypants" (I don't wanna know), has taken a NES Zapper, a duckhunt cartridge, some foam board and lamp fixtures and crafted this way cool table lamp!
From the site: "So one day I picked up an NES Zapper (gun) and went "woah, that would make a cool lamp!" So... after playing around...Then I stumbled around for ideas for the base and shade. A regular cartridge was too small a base, so I measured one and made a 1.5 scale replica out of cardboard, and screwed the gun to it. I weighted it with stones, and then tackled the shade. I picked up a $2 shade at the re-store, a pack of fun foam, and voila! After hours and hours of cutting pixellated shapes, I was done! A little dab of glue to secure the shade, and... ta dah!"
Awesome work! I just really hope that the zapper wasn't dead. As we continue on aging, parts and pieces for the original systems are starting to become more and more scarce and more in demand than recent years. If it was dead, so be it, it was headed for a landfill anyways.
Nick Greeley, Monday, 12 May 2008 Old GamerKids these days and their new fangled 3-dimensional gaming worlds with their online buddy lists and their guilds and having more online friends than physical friends! Why, when I was young, I used to have to walk up hill, BOTH WAYS, just to get to my Atari. And we didn't have none of those fancy wireless controllers that they have to day! No! We had to sit 4 feet from the little 14" TV to play Space Invaders on the 2600!
Ok, that's enough of my ranting. MC, once again has brought us another useful, if not depressing for some of us, story about How To Tell You're an Aging Gamer . For example:
"You see more double digit anniversaries for your favorite games." or how bout the fact that when many of us started playing, controllers had 1 button. Not 15, but 1!
Via CNN , via Gametap, comes a Q & A session with Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon talking about version eight of, arguably, one of the most defining fighting games of the arcade era:
"In April, Midway announced the eighth version of the super successful American fighting series, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe, debuting the likes of DC superheroes Superman and Batman along side Mortal Kombat characters Sub-Zero and Scorpion.
We caught up with co-creator Ed Boon who spoke about the new inclusion of DC characters, balancing Superheroes such as Superman, the new storyline, and the new face of fatalities and finishers."
Will there be blood? Will there be fatalities? Will we see Batman's mask ripped off and his identity revealed? Read on to find out what Ed has to say.
"Brian de Palma's Pac-man starring Mick Jagger? Woody Harrelson as Leisure Suit Larry, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson? A 12-part television series of Where in the World is Carmen San Diego produced by J.J. Abrams?
ACMI wants your elevator pitch for a film or television adaptation of a classic videogame - think director, cast, possibly location and maybe a tagline for the billboard."
Not sure if it's just a Down Under competition or not, but Retroblast! faithful Sez pointed this one out to us.
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image has a contest coinciding with the Game On exhibition they've currently got going asking you to come up with a pitch for a live action movie or television show based on your favorite videogame character.
I was thinking more of a Basic Instinct meets Pac-Man with the ghosts being the stalkers.
Would you look at the size of that thing! It's HUGE! It's so big it probably has it's own zipcode! Ok, that was lame, but what more can you say about a foosball table that requires 22 players, 11 per side, to actually play a fully functioning game?
"Here’s the largest table football game in the world. In fact, Table Football XXL is so huge, two entire soccer teams — 22 players — could face off with it, settling their challenges without ever setting foos on a real field. This monster was built by Amsterdam brewer Amstel, a stunt that coincided with the European Champions League Finals."
To date it looks like he's got Dig Dug and Zookeeper nearly ready for all of you retro-hungry keychain maniacs to start purchasing.
The keychains are cut from 1/8" billet aluminum and then laser cut with a 3000 watt laser. After a little cleanup, Brian then goes on to laser etch the side art into the keychains. Click the picture at left for a larger picture and Jeff's full article.
Pricing isn't set in stone but they look to be under $15 for sure and very well could end up being under $10 for pre-orders.
Very cool and unique stuff to adorn your keys and go along side your pewter donkey kong keychain.
Retroblast! reader Phillip has pointed out a nice blog entry over at Neatorama chronicaling the Rise and Fall of Atari as it were:
From the site:
"If you know anything about the pop culture of the 1970s, the name Atari is synonymous with video games. So what happened? Where did Atari go? Here’s the story."
Check it out, and thanks again to Phillip for pointing it out to us!
A group of contributors has gotten together and put together a timeline of events in Video Arcade history.
The timeline starts in 1971 with the commercial release of Galaxy Game:
"Installed in Tresidder Union in September 1971, the game was quickly and enthusiastically embraced by the Stanford community, with players often waiting for over an hour for their next turn.
Galaxy Game is a reprogrammed version of Spacewar!, which was conceived in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen and first realized on the PDP-1 at M.I.T. in 1962"
I'm sure there's some inaccuracies to the list, but it's still a very cool way to check out the history of arcade games. Kudos to the folks at Dipity for coming up with a way cool technology, or at least, putting it to good use. And thanks to Kevin for bringing it to our attention!
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The $15,000 NES Cart (0) by d_Random
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